2018 Writing Scrapbook

Maiden of the Mist

The melody whispered sweetly through his mind. Dust flickered and fell to the ground off of the ancient pages of music as he dusted off the paper. You could almost blow the clumps off in layers, shaking off the sheets of dirt.

His skin would normally prickle in disgust at the odd texture and odor of the object, but his mind was filled with too much anguish to pay much attention to the specifics. He could barely make out the notes, the ones with a sharp stem and a casually drawn staff- all handwritten, but he recognized it all the same.

Old, wrinkled yellow pages laid on floor, littering it with more and more notes, one for every key on the piano and many more. He didn't give them a second glance, only the one song. He remembered every note that he'd written, many centuries ago. Seeing the exact work that he'd worked his whole life on, though, that was too much to bear.

'Caligo' was the simple title, scrawled in hardly legible handwriting. That's wasn't the title he'd desired, but his Latin translations weren't good enough for anything more intricate. He'd simply referred to it in the days of its writing as The Maiden, as though his music was a living, breathing human being itself.

At the time of its creation, he'd at first designated that it should be an opus, but his plans changed to a piano sonata, and then finally to just a simple piano etude, to be played as a solo with no accompanist. He'd thought many times that it could be played with a wind ensemble, maybe a few flutes and bassoons, but the idea was scrapped.

This song had been his passion, though not necessarily his joy for more years than he could count. If it was not destined to receive accompaniment, then it wouldn't. He'd written and rewritten it, trying to form the essence of the subject he was writing about, trying to capture it in perfect detail.

For Caligo's subject was a memory, too distant for anybody to expect him to remember. Yet he did. So when he found the score, it brought him to his knees. "My lord, it's still here," he whispered, before his eyes went bright and glossy. "It's still here. It's still here!"

The man got back up and started jumping, yelling, whooping with the pages in his arms, clutching them close. Once he was worn, panting and sweating, he began sobbing, giant tears slipping down his face, anger consuming him.

"Fifty years!" he screamed. "I spent fifty years on this song, lost it for a millenium, and you still won't return? You promised! You promised!"

Sighing, he took the long silence to think back across the span of his life. The time he was in the army. The texture of his uniform, and the greasy feel of sweat on his back. In these sensory details, he was taken back in time.

The men around him had been young, chuckling and grinning like downright fools by day, howling with fear by night.

He'd befriended a few during training, and they'd pulled down his cap and slapped him on the back. "You're a quiet one, aren't you?"one of noticed.

He shrugged. "I don't see any point in talking. After all, what would we talk about? I've done more than you'd accomplish in a lifetime, and somehow, people don't seem to like a braggart."

The other man chuckled heartily. "You're a cheeky boy. Besides, you can't be more than twenty-eight. You're still a young man," he replied.

"I'm older than I seem," he said shyly with a smile.

"What? Twenty-nine, thirty? All I wanted to know was how a man who refuses to come drink with us can be at the top of our class," he took a swig of his beer.

He had been seventy-eight at the time, when he befriended these military men. They jostled him and teased him about his shy nature. He usually kept to himself, and most wondered if he'd had a bad run-in with his family that had made him so melancholy. At the same time, they'd praised him and acclaimed him as the most patient man they had known. He remembered how slowly they coaxed him into a more sociable world after a two century hiatus.